When the Day of Evil Comes (25 page)

The hotel’s bath gel, a noxious vanilla-scented concoction, sounded better to me than anything I’d experienced all day, my standards were so low. So I filled the tub, emptied the tiny bottle into the warm running water, and sank myself into the suds.

My temples throbbed. My body ached. My mind reeled. I practiced deep breathing and prayed to all three members of the Trinity, covering my bases by hitting the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost in quick succession. I needed relief. Surely the Lord could see that. Maybe I could get it by knocking hard on all three doors.

My headache was just about gone when I was jolted out of my near-coma by a thunderous knock on the door.

Cursing does not come naturally to me. I’m not good at it, and the words take on a strange, tinny timbre as they pass my lips. But on this occasion, I made a good faith effort. I cussed a streak as I wrapped a tiny, thin hotel towel around my slippery body and stomped to the door. I hooked the inside safety latch, opened the door, and peered through the crack.

I expected hotel staff. Someone bearing a replacement shower curtain. Someone who would see the distress on my face and feel appropriately guilty for failing to properly service my room.

What I got instead was the Chicago Police Department.

“Officer Pruitt. CPD,” the man said. “Looking for a Mr. Dylan Foster.”

“Mister?”

“Dylan Foster.”

“Dylan Foster is a woman. Ms. Dylan Foster. Or Doctor. That works too. Either one.”

“Okay, Missus. Have you seen her?”

“How much more do you want to see? I’m standing here in a towel.”

Officer Pruitt clearly wasn’t burning up the Bell curve on his IQ test. “You’re Dylan Foster?”

“Yes,” I said slowly. “I’m Dylan Foster.”

“You are under arrest.”

More cussing. Mentally this time. I coached myself to keep my composure. Hysterics would only make the situation worse.

“On what charge?” I asked.

“Trespassing.”

Rats.

“Breaking and entering.”

Cuss, cuss, cuss.

“Assault and battery.”

Whoa. I tried to remain calm.

“Who did I allegedly,” I dragged the word out, “assault and batter?”

“Mariann Zocci.” Officer Pruitt pulled his cuffs off his belt, suddenly all business. “You’ll have to come with me.”

“Mariann Zocci was assaulted?”

“Mrs. Foster, I need you to cooperate. Would you like me to call for a female officer?”

“Is she okay?”

“Mrs. Foster, how much time do you need to prepare for your departure?”

I stammered. “What do I …? Do I leave my stuff? Should I pack?”

“I’ll need you to dress for departure, Mrs. Foster. Would you like me to call for a female officer?”

“No. I just need a few minutes.” I started to close the door.

Officer Pruitt shoved his foot into the doorway “I’m afraid I can’t leave you unattended, Mrs. Foster.”

“You mean you need to watch me dress?”

“Afraid so, ma’am.”

“I’d like you to call for a female officer.”

“Will do.”

He reached for his belt and pulled out what looked like a walkie-talkie. The kind my brother and I played with when we
were kids. Only this one was big and black and official-looking. He asked dispatch for a female officer, specifying the hotel name, address, and room number, adding that, “the suspect is cooperative but is unclothed.”

Great. Let’s advertise and see if we can draw a crowd.

He disconnected the call and stared at me. Officer Pruitt clearly had no intention of letting me out of his sight.

“What happened to Mariann Zocci?”

“You have the right to remain silent.”

“Was she badly injured?”

“If you choose to forego that right, anything you say can and will be used against you.”

“Is she okay?”

“You have the right to an attorney.”

“You’re not going to tell me anything, are you?”

“If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you.”

“Is she in the hospital?”

He stared at me.

I tightened my towel and stared back.

We stood like that, staring at each other until the female officer arrived.

She had a peppermint-red hairdo, pink shimmery lipstick (certainly non-regulation), and a big black handgun strapped to her belt. I was afraid of her.

“Officer,” she said to Officer Pruitt.

“Officer,” he said back. “Mrs. Foster would like a female officer to chaperone her preparation for departure.”

“Mrs. Foster,” she said to me.

“Ms.,” I said.

“Ms.,” she said. “Please unlatch the door so I can step inside.”

She followed me inside and shut the door behind us.

“Do you have a name?” I asked. It seemed a fair request for such an intimate experience.

“Officer Simon,” she said. “I know this is awkward.”

No kidding.

“But if you’ll just dress quickly, we can get you down to the station and get this over with.”

I turned my back to her and reached for my suitcase, fishing around for some clean clothes.

She turned aside discreetly as I dressed.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “What’s going to happen? Where are you taking me?”

“County lockup,” she said. “You’ll be processed there, arraigned in the morning, and then assigned to a cell.”

“I’m going to jail?” I shoved my legs into a pair of jeans. How did one dress for jail? Comfort seemed a priority, so I reached for a sweatshirt. “But I didn’t do anything. I’m innocent.”

“Everyone’s innocent, honey.”

“Can you tell me what happened to Mariann Zocci?”

“Who is Mariann Zocci?”

“The woman I didn’t assault and batter.”

“I have no information, Ms. Foster. I’m just here to assist in your arrest.”

Assist in my arrest. Like she was doing me a favor.

“What should I do with my stuff? I’m supposed to check out in the morning.”

“I suggest you leave it and have someone pick it up.”

“I don’t know anyone in Chicago,” I said.

“I’m very sorry, ma’am.”

The Chicago Police Department wasn’t interested in my problems, apparently. And I was going to jail. Alone. For something I didn’t do. In a city where I knew no one.

And Mariann Zocci had been assaulted and battered.

“Can I make a phone call?” I asked.

“Not until you’re processed.”

“Look. You seem like a nice enough person. I’m asking for a break here. I’m not a criminal. I’ve never done anything wrong in my entire life. Can I just please make a call? One?”

She looked at me, considering my plight. Surely she’d heard this a thousand times. For some reason, still unknown to me, she relented.

“Hurry it up,” she said.

I raced for my phone and dialed Liz Zocci. It was after midnight. She answered on the second ring. Maybe it was true that mothers never sleep.

“Hello?”

“Liz. Dylan Foster.”

She didn’t seem at all fazed. As though we were old friends and I always called her at 12:15 in the morning.

“Dylan. How are you?”

“Have you heard from Mariann?”

“No. How did it go?”

“Fine. But I think she’s been beaten. I’m being arrested for assault.”

“You assaulted her?”

“Of course not. I’m just being arrested for it.”

“Did Joe come home while you were there?”

“I think so. As I was leaving,” I said. “Can you find out what happened to her? Someone needs to check on her.”

“Where are they taking you?”

I covered the phone and spoke to Officer Simon. “Where are you taking me?”

“Cook County lockup. Downtown.” She recited the address, which I repeated to Liz.

“Is this your one phone call?” Liz asked me.

“I don’t think so. I think I get an official one later.”

“Don’t make your phone call until morning. You may need to save it for an attorney. I’ll try to find out what happened and let you know. Maybe they’ll put me through to you.”

“Thanks, Liz.”

“And Dylan?”

“Yes?”

“Christine woke me up to pray for you tonight.”

“Good. I need it.”

“Obviously.”

We hung up. I was ready As ready as I was going to get, anyway. I hoped silently that no press had gotten wind that Mariann Zocci, the matriarch of a prominent Chicago family, had been beaten. I didn’t need any pictures of myself splashed on the front page of the
Tribune.
Not without mascara or a lawyer.

Officer Simon escorted me to the police cruiser. Officer Pruitt cuffed me, which ranked right up there as one of the most humiliating experiences of my life. As I was loaded into the backseat, he put his hand on the top of my head, helping me duck into the car. Just like on TV.

The ride to county lockup was depressingly short, my sense of dread accelerating the entire process to warp speed.

Within a span of a half hour, I’d been booked, photographed, fingerprinted, and escorted into a holding cell that housed twenty other women.

Jail, it turns out, is an efficient leveler. The luxury of self-righteousness became immediately unavailable to me.

Most of my cellmates were clothed, shall we say, less modestly than I. And were surely due some grace from the Almighty, experienced sinners that they were. For once in my
life, any sense of safe superiority I’d cultivated with good behavior and higher education fled my heart entirely. I was one of them.

We were all in the pokey. Together. Twenty pathetic examples of miserable, needy humanity.

I found myself a spot on the floor—a space relatively clean of urine and sputum—and curled myself into a ball, hugging my shins, my chin on my knees.

If I were even a moderately decent Christian, I would have sung praises to the Lord, like a real disciple. Or witnessed to my jailers like Paul. Or forgiven my accusers like Jesus Himself.

What I did instead was cry. And wallow in fear and self-pity. I had never felt so alone in my entire life.

I watched the clock on the hallway wall tick off a second at a time, until 2:16 a.m., when one of my jailers approached my communal cage.

“Foster?” he said loudly.

I looked up. “I’m Foster.”

“Phone call.”

The few women in the holding cell who were still awake taunted me, mainly out of jealousy, I guess. A 2:00 a.m. phone call could only be good news.

I trotted down the hall after the female officer, who was businesslike and efficient. She never once looked at me, and I’m sure if asked to describe me, would not have been able to. I was a nonperson to her. One of the inmates. Someone to be herded and kept under control.

She stepped aside as a door opened electronically. A bank of black dial phones was attached to a wall in the otherwise empty room.

“Five minutes,” she said.

I picked up one of the phones. “Dylan Foster.”

“It’s Liz.”

“Thank God. I’m so glad to hear your voice. How’s Mariann?”

“Not too good,” she said. “She’s at Chicago Memorial.”

“She’s in the hospital?”

“Broken arm, fractured eye socket. Multiple contusions.”

The breath came out of me.

“Dylan? Are you still there?”

“Yeah. I’m just … stunned.”

“Don’t be. It’s not the first time.”

“Did you talk to her?” I asked.

“Joe did it.”

“She told you that?”

“Not in so many words.”

“Was he standing right there?”

“I couldn’t tell. I think so.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“Can you make it through the night?” she asked.

“Of course.”

“I can get you out in the morning.”

“I can’t ask you to do that,” I said, though I desperately wanted to ask her to do that.

“You didn’t ask. I offered.”

“Thank you.”

“I’ll see you in the morning,” she said.

I hung up the phone and knocked on the steel door. My jailer pressed a button, motioned for me to step into the hall, and escorted me back to the cell.

N
O ANGEL FLUNG OPEN
the doors of Cook County lockup that night. Maybe that’s because I wasn’t doing the singing and praising required to precipitate such a miracle. As it was, though, I spent the next miserable hours curled on the floor of that holding cell, wondering where God had run off to. Where had He been when Joe Zocci was knocking his wife around? And why was He letting them blame me for it? Just what was He thinking abandoning me like this?

I must have dozed, because I spent the rest of the night in the company of Peter Terry. My first encounter with him since the library. He hunted me through a rapid, violent series of dreams.

In one, Mariann Zocci stood beside me, tapping me awake, urgent with something to say. Peter Terry arrived and grabbed her by the ankles, swinging her around by her feet, smashing her head into a telephone pole.

Then Gavin was standing in a creek, watching the sun rise. Peter Terry eviscerated him. Literally. Stem to stern. And hung his mangled body by the neck from a shower curtain rod.

In another, Peter Terry sat beside my mother’s hospital bed,
holding her hand and gradually squeezing the life out of her, her face purpling as she gasped for breath.